The IDF has destroyed an astounding 2,200 Iranian regime targets, mostly in the Tehran and western Iran areas, which it hopes will weaken the regime substantially as well as the regime's ability to threaten Israel, the military said on Sunday.
These targets expanded at the end of last week to start to include Basij militia checkpoints in the field, and not only large headquarters-type buildings.
Despite those successes, the IDF is very conservative about how quickly these attacks will facilitate the Iranian opposition being able to topple the regime, if at all.
For example, the IDF has noted a trend of some regime supporters deserting their posts, as some Israeli political officials have leaked.
Hard-nosed IDF defense officials still view the overall trend as too small to bring about any near-term collapse.
IDF targets
Questions have been raised about how often the IDF is killing regime forces who themselves are used to kill protesters versus merely blowing up their buildings.
The IDF provided examples in Tehran, Ahvaz, and Isfahan, where it made sure to target the facilities only when they were full of forces that would be used to attack protesters.
Between 1,900 and several thousand Iranian regime supporters have been killed, but this is out of an estimated 125,000 IRGC, 400,000 military, and one to two million Basij, including around 200,00 harder core militia members.
Pressed about how long the IDF will maintain the war on Iran and what amount of additional time would be needed to bring about the regime's collapse, the IDF pushes back against such questions.
While complimenting the US on unprecedented cooperation, with American forces handling most southern Iranian targets, naval targets, and other issues, the IDF also said that the depth of US intervention in the current war means Washington will also have a dominant say on when the war ends.
Regime change?
In that light, the IDF is trying to strike as many targets as it can every day to advance the potential conditions for regime change, while soberly acknowledging that there may be insufficient time to do so, or that the Iranian population may not be sufficiently organized to topple the regime.
There are also other hard-to-define variables regarding potential regime change.
One is that Israeli officials were surprised at how quickly and cleanly the Iranians appointed Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader to succeed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who Israel assassinated on February 28.
That quick transition could portend a more stable regime than expected coming out of this war.
On the other hand, the IDF has expressed doubts about whether Mojtaba is truly functioning and is really in control of the Islamic regime and its military.
According to the IDF, he was seriously wounded and, in any event, the entire higher echelon of Iranian commanders (those who survived the assassination of around 50 top military officials) is mostly cut off from their field commanders and soldiers.
This could leave the regime more vulnerable on the inside than it currently looks on the outside.
Regardless of whether regime change succeeds or not, the IDF said it has destroyed most of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force.
The military has dissected the Quds Force both by killing top officials in Iran itself, as well as top liaison officials in other countries, such as five top officials killed in the Ramada Hotel in Beirut recently.
In addition, 17 out of 20 IRGC Quds Force aircraft for exporting terror, arms, and funding have been destroyed during the war.
The IDF is still hunting for the remaining three aircraft.
Finally, the IDF gave its latest estimate that on January 8-9, when one million Iranian protesters came out on the streets, and the regime delivered its worst wave of violence and suppression, between 5,000 and 10,000 protesters were killed.
Other estimates have put the figure as high as 35,000.
Still, the IDF said that other intelligence allies have better information on the issue and that Iran's cutting off of the internet during that period has made it hard to fully assess the numbers.